Who would need this?

Anyone who is involved in creating and changing a document application that needs to ensure the changes have not effected and other parts of the page or document flow.

What does DocDiff do?

Most print stream comparison products can help you determine that minor changes made to your transactional and line of business documents have not changed the layout or content of the print file. They are regression test tools.

If you have made significant changes to your documents such as printing on different media or using a different composition tool, then you need a different tool because the flow of the text will likely change. If you add paragraphs or lines of text to a form, then the flow of the document will change. If you have fixed widowed or orphaned text, then the document flow will change. If you change column layout to reduce the number pages, then the document will change so drastically that standard print comparison tools will not work.

DocDiff discovers the flow from paragraph to paragraph in the original document and compares it to the flow in the new document. It determines if the flow has changed and then tells you about each difference. It also makes sure that the content of each paragraph and table cell is the same. If it detects differences, then it informs you.

DocDiff is a significant advance in print stream comparison. Its ability to detect differences found across page and paragraph boundaries makes it possible for you to change composition tools with the assurance that the only changes that happen are the changes that you expect.

Like its companion product, STREAMdiff, DocDiff does not expect you to write complex conditions to describe changes. It provides you a visual interface and a drag and drop capability that makes it easy to define expected changes.

How does DocDiff compare documents?

This is done in an easy to use GUI with side by side actual pages from your control and test print output streams. Setup your two input files, define your resources (DocDiff uses your resources either inline or in a separate resource file) and start the viewer. All differences recorded in an audit trail and can be reported in text or html format for feeding back to your development teams.

The ROI on this software is compelling as it reduces your document testing cycle, decreases time to market and lowers your overall production costs.

DocDiff inspects the visual output of two print data streams to ensure that there are no unexpected differences. Interrogating print stream structures, DocDiff provides a detailed list of specific changes and pinpoints the exact location of items that have changed.

With changes isolated, immediate action can be taken to resolve differences.

Side by side view of two compared print data streams displaying visually different text, images, and graphics and the reason for each difference

Drag and drop acceptance of selected changes

DocDiff includes a batch engine so large jobs can be run independently of the viewer. Below is a screenshot showing a font size difference.

DocDiff Studio

The DocDiff Studio is a Windows application that lets you see the document comparison on your screen or screens. We have designed the viewer so you can have the original document on one screen and the modified document on another screen. This feature helps you see each complete page without extra effort. You can easily see the highlighted differences. You can use its graphical features to describe documents and document flow when the automatic detection does not completely describe the expected flow.

DocDiff Batch

The DocDiff batch application lets you compare the contents of the original print data stream against the contents of the modified data stream, allowing you to verify thousands of documents like invoices and policies behave as expected.